Comments on: Financial Challenge – Day 15 http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/02/13/financial-challenge-day-15/ Bridging the gap between saving money and investing Mon, 20 May 2013 16:31:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Andrew http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/02/13/financial-challenge-day-15/comment-page-1/#comment-4627 Andrew Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:28:13 +0000 http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/02/13/financial-challenge-day-15/#comment-4627 I dumped my local phone service (Sprint) who I used to have basic service with. I was paying about $17 a month for a dial tone. I used my cell for long distance, since it was “already paid for” minutes and was on a $4 a month plan for international dialing. I’m from Australia, so I make regular international calls. With the $4 per month, I paid 7c per minute on weekends and 17c a minute any other time.

I dumped all of those except the cell phone. I’m currently using VOIP “internet phone” from a company called Packet8 (www.packet8.net). This is pretty much the same service as Vonage, who advertise everywhere. I paid $60 less a $60 mail-in rebate for the VOIP box which plugs into my cable modem. I bought it from Amazon, so no sales tax and since it was over $25, I got free shipping. After activating, I got 2 months free to try it.

Now I pay $19.99 plus taxes (about $22 all up) a month. For that I get free calling anywhere in the US, and 3c a minute any time to Aus. 2c to Britain.

The service includes all the things you pay extra for with Sprint (3-way calling, call waiting, caller ID, voicemail, call forwarding…). Also, you can get extra local numbers in whatever area code you want for an extra $5 a month. If your kid is away at school, they can make a local call to talk to you. Pretty cool.

I’m not affiliated with Packet8, just thought I’d share. If you are referred by an existing customer, the referrer gets 1 month free, but the new customer only gets 1 month free, so they give 1 of your free months to the person who sent you to them. The last couple of friends I set up with Packet8, I just had them buy and activate themselves.

]]> By: anna http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/02/13/financial-challenge-day-15/comment-page-1/#comment-784 anna Tue, 14 Feb 2006 17:53:16 +0000 http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/02/13/financial-challenge-day-15/#comment-784 We sat down and looked hard at our SBC Ameritech phone bill last July, and I was shocked that I was paying 15 cents per minute on long distance and 12 cents per minute on local long distance. We had (a long time ago) used BigZoo.com to save in that area, but they folded with hardly a notice about what was going on.

So I did a little hunting on-line, and Unitel is what we settled on. It’s a company (out of california, I think) that pretty much just plugs into the service you have. We have SBC for the local plan, but with Unitel doing our local LD and LD rates, we’re down to 3 cents a minute on BOTH. What a savings, lemme tell ya! There might be better, but with what I’m saving already… my phone bill with just SBC used to be up around $65-70 a month. Now it’s $30 for SBC local and $3 for Unitel… totalling $33 dollars. I”ve cut the bill in HALF. Woot.

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